Chapter 4 Feeling
MICHAEL'S POV
I’m a renowned editor at one of the biggest publishing houses in Seattle. The kind of place that decides which stories matter and which ones disappear quietly. I shape manuscripts for a living. I carve meaning out of other people’s words.
And I haven’t picked up a new book to read in over six months. Not because I’m busy. Because I don’t care.
Lately, everything sounds like noise. Songs I used to love blur together, all rhythm and no feeling, like someone left a radio on in another room. My favorite food tastes like texture, nothing more. Salt, sweet, spice....it’s all the same dull note. Mornings arrive too fast, nights drag on too long, and even sleep feels like an obligation instead of relief. I move through days the way you move through an airport terminal....present, technically, but already gone.
And people. God, people. I detest them. The endless talking, the wanting, the performance of it all. Everyone desperate to be seen, to be validated, to be remembered. The whole human race feels exhausting, a repetitive draft that never quite gets better no matter how many times it’s edited. I’ve watched enough of them to know how the sentences usually end.
I haven’t felt moved by anything or anyone in longer than I can remember. Until I see a stranger bleeding in a public washroom.
It’s the sound first. The quiet drip of blood hitting porcelain. I watch it slide from his nose, bright and obscene, staining the white sink. There’s something about it that grabs me by the throat. Something intimate and wrong and achingly real. Proof that something underneath the surface is breaking. I can’t look away. It’s raw and alive in a way nothing else has been in months.
And before you get it twisted, I’m not a psycho. I don’t get off on pain. I don’t linger on gore. This isn’t some dark fantasy or repressed sickness clawing its way out. And I’m not depressed either. I’m not spiraling. I’m not having a midlife crisis or questioning my legacy or any of that self-help bullshit.
It’s just that for the first time in a long time, something cuts through the static.
The downside of hating people is that eventually you start hating being touched by them too. Their hands feel intrusive. Their closeness feels like a demand. Which is inconvenient, considering I’m someone who has always loved sex.
Not the romance of it. The physics and heat. The way it used to cut through everything else...sweat-slick bodies, breath turning ragged, the temporary mercy of desire drowning out thought.
Sex was the one constant I could rely on when the rest of life dulled. I liked knowing exactly what I was doing to someone. Liked the way hunger narrowed my focus, burned everything else away. Even when it was just a distraction, it worked.
Until it didn’t.
No one’s caught my interest in at least seven months. I’d started to assume my libido had followed everything else into that flat, gray place where sensation goes to die. I wasn’t worried about it.... I don’t worry about much anymore.
Then I saw him in the elevator.
He wasn’t bleeding then, so no, this wasn’t about that. It was his body, the quiet way he held himself. The tension under the softness. My attention locked in before I could stop it. And he saw me too. I caught it in the way his eyes hesitated, how they flicked away and then came back, cautious but curious. Like he was trying to decide whether looking at me was a mistake he was willing to make.
Our eyes lock in the mirror while the bleeding slows to nothing. “Does this happen often?” I ask, quietly.
He shrugs, like it’s nothing. “Now and then.”
He rinses his face, watching himself like he doesn’t quite trust his own body. I tear a couple paper towels free and hold them out. He hesitates for half a second before taking them.
“Thanks,” he mutters.
He dabs, checks again, then crumples the towels and tosses them in the trash. When he turns back to me, I’m still leaning against the sink, still watching him. Up close, I take him in properly this time. Grey eyes....lighter than I expected. Dark hair that looks like he runs his hands through it when he’s thinking. He’s dressed well. Not flashy but intentional. A fitted suit that makes him look composed even now.
My mind flicks back to the weight of his thigh under my cheek. The warmth, the fact that he let me stay there.
He breaks the silence first, voice careful. “Why didn’t you want to sit up front? If you’re on the panel.”
So he's skittish, but not shy. Like he’s always braced for something he doesn’t want to explain. I smile a little because I can see it makes him uneasy, and because I like that it does. Instead of answering, I straighten and meet his gaze fully. “What’s your name?”
He blinks, clearly not expecting that. I watch him decide whether to give it to me. He glances at his watch instead. “It’s getting late,” he says, already shifting his weight. “I should go.”
“Back to the event?”
He shakes his head. “Home.”
I feel it then, his urge to flee. Like staying another minute might cost him something he’s not prepared to lose. It pricks at my curiosity, hooks deeper than it should. “You still haven’t told me your name.”
He nods once, calm in a way that feels practiced. “I know.”
I wait and he steadily meets my eyes. “What would you want to do with it? I'm just a book nerd, remember?”
Something about that lands wrong....in the best way. My mouth curves before I can stop it. Before I can press or tease or test the edges of whatever this is, he turns and walks toward the exit.
I watch him walk away.
Not in a casual way. Not politely either, I take in the line of his shoulders under the suit jacket, the way his back stays straight, the quiet strength in his stride. He’s lean but solid, built like someone who carries weight without showing it.
He reaches for the door.
“Hey,” I say, just as his fingers curl around the handle. He pauses. Doesn’t turn right away. That alone tells me he’s listening.
“If you’re not going to give me your name,” I add, voice easy, “....you could at least give me something I can work with.”
Now he turns, slow and wary, those grey eyes cutting back to me. I tilt my head, let my gaze drop once and come back up to his face. I step closer, not enough to corner him, just enough to make the space matter. “I’m trying to figure out,” I say plainly, “....whether you’ve been checking me out all night because you’re interested, or if it's just wishful thinking on my part.”
There’s no fluster in him now, no hesitation....just a quiet kind of judgment that lands harder than any insult ever could.
“I don’t like men like you,” he says bluntly. His eyes flick back to mine. “Way too used to being indulged. Whatever you think you saw, you didn’t.”
And then he’s gone, leaving me standing there with the echo of his words and the unsettling realization that he'll haunt my thoughts long after he's gone.